New York City event will educate about Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs).

Few topics have received greater attention this year than IDNs. So it’s fitting that the first ever “IDN Event and Auction” will take place October 30, 2010 at the Haru Restaurant in New York City at 7 pm. The event is organized by IDNTools and will be sponsored by Register.com, Moniker and SnapNames.

The goal of the event is to educate domain registrants about IDNs, their value proposition, how to register them, the value of developing IDNs, the importance of connecting with local audiences, and we will also hold an IDN auction.

Register.com recently did a deal with IDN Newsletter to sell its portfolio of company-owned internationalized domains names. IDN Newsletter is similar to other domain sales newsletters except, well, it only includes IDNs.

IDN Newsletter informs us that it sold over $5,000 worth of Register.com’s IDN names today within the first hour of its Register.com mailing. Top sales include:

整体.com
$2,000
Body Work, Japanese

债券.com
$2,500
Bonds, Chinese

אמא.com
$975
Mom, Hebrew

The domains Register.com is selling through IDN Newsletter have standard Latin-script top level domains and use other scripts for the second level domain name. Until this week all TLDs were in Latin scripts, but three country code TLDs are now available in Arabic — and more are on the way.

Based on VeriSign’s current plans, owners of these IDN .com domains will have rights to register “.com equivalents” in IDNs when they become available.

In another country code top level domain decision, ICANN’s board approved a redelegation request from United Republic of Tanzania for the traditional .TZ country code domain name to Tanzania Network Information Centre Limited.

.Tel IDNs will be offered by many of the same domain name registrars that currently offer .tel. Registration costs are expected to be similar to existing .tel registrations. Although registrants can pick their language for the second level, the top level domain will remain the Latin-character “.tel”.

As of the end of 2009, .tel had approximately 275,000 domain names registered.

Registrants of existing .com domain names are well positioned for coming release of IDN TLDs.

For years, domainers have been investing in Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) that use non-Latin characters. But these have all been IDN at the second level only, as there currently aren’t any top level domain names in non-Latin characters. So an internet user has to type the second level domain using one character set and then append “.com” to the end.

But that’s about to change, beginning with a select number of IDN country code domain names. Then, if everything goes as planned, entities will be able to apply for generic top level domain names in different scripts as part of the new gTLD process.

So what does this mean for people who bought idn.com domain names? They were banking on .com registry VeriSign getting the rights to “.com equivalents” in other scripts and languages and offering those to the existing registrants of IDN.com. As of right now, that looks like a good bet.

“Nothing is in concrete yet,” said Chuck Gomes, Vice President of Policy and Compliance for VeriSign Information Services. “But I think it’s a pretty well agreed-to plan.”

Essentially, if you have a second level .com domain name, then you’ll get the right to “activate” that second level domain in any of the .com-equivalent IDNs that VeriSign gets. The same goes for .net.

“We want the .com name to be a unique experience for .com regardless of what script you do it in,” said Gomes.

Gomes said it’s too early to tell how many IDN equivalents of .com and .net VeriSign might apply for. “We can’t predict what ICANN will do in terms of the application process,” Gomes explained. “I can say that the business unit is considering applying for ’several’ IDN versions of .com in some of the scripts that are available.”

Owners of a .com that want to activate a .com-equivalent-IDN may need to pay a fee to do so. “The way I understand it right now, if you want to activate andrew.chinese-version-of-.com, there will be a fee, although that hasn’t been determined,” said Gomes.

However, domain registrants won’t be required to activate IDN TLDs just to keep them out of the hands of other people. The .com equivalent IDNs will always be reserved for whomever has the second level domain. This also means that, once IDN TLDs are released, if someone registers keyword.com-equivalent-IDN, no one else can register keyword.com.

The management of these activated IDN domain names will take place at the registrar. It likely won’t be possible to transfer ownership of one .com-equivalent IDN to another person while a registrant still has another .com-equivalent-IDN or .com of the same second level domain.

VeriSign’s current plan is that an activated IDN will work much like any other domain name, giving registrants full control such as nameservers. “If you want to create a web site around that [Chinese IDN TLD] you can, or you can point the Chinese version to your existing web site,” explained Gomes.

The idea of IDN equivalents of existing top level domain names could create some interesting situations, however. Although they have the presumptive right of renewal, registries such as VeriSign and Public Interest Registry merely have a contract to manage domain names such as .com and .org. If these registries get the IDN equivalents of these top level domain names and then lose the main contract, that would result in two different registries controlling what are essentially equivalent TLDs.

“How would that all happen, I don’t know that I know the answer to that, or if that would ever happen,” Gomes said, referring to the potential conflict. “It creates some complications that I don’t think anybody would want.”

[Editor's note: this is a guest article about the potential of IDN geo domain names.]

We’ve long been believers in GeoDomains and continue to be on the lookout for new and lucrative niches, which is why we have each individually made substantial investments in IDN GeoDomains.

With the fog of uncertainty finally lifting over IDNs, now is the ideal time for for geo investors to stake a claim in IDNs where the window of opportunity is quickly closing.

For years, antagonists of non-latin IDNs have focused on the premise that the part to the right of the dot was still in English. Let’s face it, [non-English] dot [English "com"] never made any sense, and that was the number one reason why many didn’t take a closer look.

But a few weeks ago, this all changed, as VeriSign finally showed its hand and put to bed the rumors of how these half IDNs were going to operate. In a brief, but game changing interview, Vice President of Policy and Compliance for VeriSign Information Services (VIS) Chuck Gomes spoke of how an existing [non-English] dot [English "com"] could be unlocked so that the domain owner also owns the rights to the same domain but with a localized extension (i.e [the same non-English domain] dot [non-English "com"]). For example, the owner of the Japanese domain, ニューオーリンズ.com (New Orleans), would also hold the rights to the same keyword with a non-English extension in the corresponding local language, such as ニューオーリンズ.コム. The characters “コム” are the familiar way to express “com” in Japanese.

So what does this mean for GeoDomainers?

ICANN’s IDN program aims to deliver on many promises, and the majority of these promises are to native speaking countries. IDNs intrinsically breed nationalistic pride in having one’s own language represented in a domain name, so it makes complete sense that GeoDomains of native cities/towns in their respective languages will be warmly welcomed.

What should we make of the competition, the new IDN ccTLDs?

Russia’s new .рф extension is a prime example, which, like the existing Japanese ccTLD are reserving all geos for government use. You can bet there will be mildly interesting informational sites put up on these geos for IDN ccTLDs, but they will be void of any commercial use. This will clear the way for IDN dot com names to dominate.

Where are the opportunities?

With only 1 million IDNs registered today, there is ample opportunity, and most old-time IDNers haven’t bought geos with a population under 100,000!

We are still in the early days of the IDN market and geos can be picked up for bargain prices on droplists or even occasionally at reg fee.